yet another bad situation

[low_delta]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040525/ts_nm/iraq_raids_dc_1

You get word that someone is an insurgent. You bust up their home and take everything they have that is of value so they can't sell it to buy weapons. Maybe arrest them.

But how good is your intel? Bad, I'd guess. It's just some officer's decision on how trusting the source is.

What do they do with the money? They say they write reciepts, but they don't very often apparently.

People seem to forget the realities of war. In war, there's no time for due process and other niceties. Our forces will stay there, and there will be war until there is some semblance of order. If we leave too soon there will be open civil war (both conventional and terrorist). While we stay, there will be war. War against us, and all the bad PR associated with an occupying power.

Meanwhile, apart from all the factions in Iraq using the US military for their own gain, the real terrorists, whose goal is eradication of western influence, are using our bad PR for their own gain.

Now tell me again, what danger did Hussein pose to us, two years ago?

Comments

[rivendweller.livejournal.com]

It's a mess, isn't it? I can't understand the logic of anyone who would vote for Bush. He got us into this, and now Kerry's going to have to get us out. How much you wanna bet the neo-cons will be all over Kerry's sorry butt during his entire term of office, ultimately blaming him TOTALLY for the Iraqi war? They'll probably try to impeach him over it.

And they'll forget about Bush's part in it.

Yep, it's a mess.

[marswalker.livejournal.com]

Back in the 70's and 80's there were numerous "U.S. out of XXX" slogans, where XXX was the latest area invaded by US, or area the US sent "advisors" to. By the mid-80s, several students at UCSC had given up and started wearing T's with "US out of N. America" slogans.

I may have to make a "BUSH out of the Oval Office" slogan shirt...

Over the weekend I went camping with friends in the desert. I don't think any had college-level education. Several were very pro-bush, and thought the only thing wrong with the recent news from Iraq was that cameras were used to record the human rights violations in the prisons (etc). I tend to view them as the epitome of "the undereducated and blinded by political slating" populace of the US - the same good folks who brought the Bush regime in.

I wonder... is it too late to move to Vitoria, BC ?

[dwivian]

We need to get a t-shirt place making those US out of N.America shirts again... I think they'd sell pretty well....

[dwivian]

The danger was "we don't know."

Give a man a major poison. Tell him he can use it all he wants on the right vermin. Watch him kill his wife, and get mad. Ask for the poison back, and get told "No." Notice the kids are eyeing Dad, and you, and don't look overly happy at either of you. Get worried they'd use it on him and who knows who else. Like you. Demand it back again, then get permission to go seize it from the law, before it is used again.

That's where we were, two years ago. Iraq had been sold/given LOTS of WMDs, and we watched them used the wrong way. We took it to the world to give us the right to undo the damage as best we could, while Hussein killed his own. We wanted to protect ourselves against the WMDs falling into the wrong hands.

Strange that we started by putting WMDs in the wrong hands, then...

Now, we can't find them. That scares the hell out of me, honestly.

So, two years ago we were afraid of the problem of not knowing where the poison was. We hoped we could come in fast enough to find it, before it got lost to everyone, and things shuffled hard and fast with leadership changes.

We've controlled the changes, but still lost the poison. And, somewhere, there is a friend of those kids that is still eyeing us, not looking happy, but that we don't know, who just may have it....